


Beware! Beware!

by idreamofdraco



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Death, Complete, Dark, Dark Draco Malfoy, Dark Magic, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fic Exchange, Male Slash, Minor Character Death, Minor Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Mystery, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War, Slash, Smut, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000, Wordcount: Over 10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-07-25 21:44:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7548289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idreamofdraco/pseuds/idreamofdraco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco Malfoy is a wanted criminal, charged for crimes committed during the war. Ginny Weasley is the Auror in charge of bringing him to justice when he finally returns to England. Little does she know how much Malfoy has changed in the four years he's been away.</p><p>Winner of the Best Kiss, Best Response to the Prompt, and Most Creative awards during the DG Forum's Winter 2016 Fic Exchange.</p><p>PLEASE heed the warnings, which are explained in a little more detail in the Story Notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Kubla Khan](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/214633) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 



> Written for rowan-greenleaf and winner of the Best Kiss, Best Response to the Prompt, and Most Creative awards during the DG Forum's Winter 2016 Fic Exchange.
> 
>  **WARNING:** Smut, slash, and character death. If slash bothers you in any way, especially Draco/Harry slash, just do us both a favor and maybe skip this one. The slashy bits will appear in chapters three and five. The most explicit smutty bits will be found in chapters four and five, but don't say I didn't warn you. There's also a bit of smut that might be considered dubious consent in chapter four. Character death will occur in chapter five (and for peace of mind, neither Draco nor Ginny dies).

A beat echoed against the glittering blanket of stars, as quickly-paced and ferocious as a drum of war. Ginny’s own heart raced to match the rhythm and failed in its endeavor. The beats were not consistent; they rang out in an ancient, ritual pattern: 

_Da-duh. Da-duh.  
Duh da-duh duh, duh da-duh duh._

“Do you hear that?” Ginny asked her companion, her voice low.

Hermione’s eyes darted, piercing the landscape for a sign of danger. “Is it a sound?” she asked, confusion and concern creasing her brow. “I thought it was my pulse, but off somehow. Can’t you feel it? The way it pounds through your blood, so strong it drowns out any other sound around you? Is it a sound at all?”

Ginny didn’t have an answer, but she understood what Hermione meant. The beat reverberated through the darkness and penetrated her to her core, shaking her bones like a rattle until she became a vessel for the beat, an instrument through which the rhythm articulated itself. If it was a sound, it seemed to originate inside her. It reminded her of those adrenaline-fueled moments out in the field, when Ginny’s heart raced so hard she could feel it beating against her sternum, and everything slowed down around her to the point where the only thing she could hear was the beating of her heart. Exactly as Hermione had described.

The fact that her own heart couldn’t match the beat unnerved her, as if she was the one ticking incorrectly, as if her body didn’t fit in the rhythm of the countryside. As if she didn’t belong here.

The beat grew stronger the closer they drew to their destination, and when they turned from the lane down a spacious, hedge-lined driveway, they both stopped, struck by the power of the beat that suddenly assaulted them as well as the sight ahead.

Ginny didn’t know how to process what she saw as it didn’t make any sense. Malfoy Manor stood before them, obscured from view by an isolated storm. A strange storm. The manor seemed to be contained inside a bubble that was only discernible by the rain that pounded against its inner boundary. Indeed, had it not been for the rain, in the darkness the dome may have been completely invisible to the naked eye. Memories of Herbology lessons at Hogwarts on rainy days floated to the surface of Ginny’s mind, the way the water would pour down the glass panes of the greenhouses, making it difficult to see out. Only, the rain and the storm were _inside_ this bubble, while Ginny and Hermione peered in from the outside.

The dome extended from the wrought-iron gates in front of them as far wide and tall as the eye could see. Tumultuous clouds roiled against the top of the invisible membrane, casting Malfoy Manor—their destination—into a blister of darkness.

“This case may be more difficult than I thought,” Hermione said, her lips grim but her eyes flinty with determination.

Like Hermione, Ginny could tell Draco Malfoy would be a most difficult challenge. But the two women were not accustomed to shying away from hardship. In fact, they were successful in their careers because they embraced the fatigue and stress that accompanied tasks others found too arduous. Harry and Ron called them masochists, but they made an undefeatable team, and Hermione hadn’t lost a case yet.

“It’s nothing we can’t handle,” Ginny said, though she was worried.

She had never seen magic like this before, this raw and loose and dark, but she recognized the Dark Arts when she saw them. She didn’t want Hermione to know how worried she truly was, even if her effort was pointless. They’d been partners long enough now that Hermione saw right through her statement. Both women chose to believe Ginny’s words because they had to. They had a job to do.

“Let’s hope you’re right.”

The serenity of the countryside had lulled them into a false sense of security. As soon as they had cleared the hedges that obscured the Malfoy property from outsiders’ eyes, the dome and its contained storm had been revealed, stunning both women into forgetting protocol. Now Ginny’s training kicked in, and she withdrew her wand as they approached the gates, Hermione following suit accordingly.

She could tell now that the beating came from within the dome, not from the night. Not from the stars. The magic inside the dome writhed and pounded like a living organ, an ugly heartbeat, and Ginny’s mind recoiled from the horror of it. When she’d first seen the dome, she’d thought of it as a blister, and the aptness of such a description could not be overstated. It looked at any moment as though it would burst, releasing that writhing magic into the world to wreak havoc, just like pus from a blister.

 _More like a tumor,_ Ginny thought. She’d never seen magic that had metastasized into this form or even this quickly. Malfoy had been back at the manor for less than forty-eight hours. How had this abomination gone unnoticed?

The gates remained firmly closed, but after Ginny ran some diagnostic spells, she determined no malevolent magic protected the entrance. That is, no more malevolent magic than what already roiled inside the dome, which in itself consisted of a simple ward, one even Ginny had learned to cast in Auror training. The ward would keep out unwanted guests as well as the elements, but its weakest point was here at the gates.

“There’s no need to barge in,” Hermione warned. She knew Ginny all too well. “He’s expecting us.”

As soon as she finished speaking, the iron in the gates contorted into the shape of a pointed face. An elegant but sinister voice emitted from an animated mouth: _“Purpose?”_

A hint of familiarity unfurled inside Ginny, but the tone she had recognized was hidden amidst something more threatening. A violent shiver wracked her body, leaving her skin prickling and alert.

As the official in charge of conducting this meeting, Hermione answered. “Hermione Granger from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and Ginevra Weasley from Auror Headquarters are here for an appointment with Draco Malfoy.”

 _“Of course,”_ the face said, something sarcastic laced in the simple reply.

The whining of aged metal pierced the night as the gate slid open, revealing a wall of water separating the two women from the rest of the driveway. They looked at each other for just a moment before Ginny stepped through the waterfall, using a spell to unsuccessfully shield herself from the downpour. The water passed right through the shield as if Ginny hadn’t cast a spell at all. Hermione did likewise and joined her, both women soaked and irritated by this fact, and the gates slammed shut behind them, solid as iron teeth.

What Ginny had assumed was a storm was in fact something else she didn’t understand. Water cascaded from the sky, but the interior of the dome was bone-dry. The clouds she’d seen from outside were actually a seething body of water above their heads, defying gravity, though when had magic ever followed the laws of physics? Still, Ginny had never seen anything like it, and she didn’t understand the purpose, unless Malfoy’s intent was simply to display the enormity of his power. If he had wanted to unnerve and frighten visitors, he’d certainly succeeded.

A shiver wracked Ginny’s body as she continued to try to catalog what she was seeing. Water from the sea poured down the sides of the dome in a torrential, all-encompassing waterfall. The bubble itself may have been contained by magic, but it was shaped by water. Earlier, Ginny had mistaken the sea for storm clouds and the waterfall for rain, but a storm must have been too modest a display of magic for the likes of a Malfoy. Instead, his desire for chaos had turned the world upside down. Almost literally.

The water drained into a thin chasm that ran along the ground where the dome’s edge met the earth, as if a deep circle had been carved into the ground around the entirety of the property. Ginny and Hermione had easily stepped over the chasm upon entering the gates. Where the water gathered or traveled underground was impossible to determine.

Under the deafening sound of the rushing water, the dome’s heart continued to pound. Ginny had already likened that rhythm to a heartbeat, but combined with the sound of the water, she couldn’t help but envision blood coursing through veins with every aching beat. Her stomach heaved at the thought of willingly walking into something so alive. She hated that she didn’t know what they were stepping into, but they had a job to do, and Ginny was there to make sure they got out of the manor alive.

The contrast between her steady heartbeat and the dome’s rhythmic beating filled her with an anxious energy, as if her heart was beating too fast, even though she knew perfectly well that her heartbeat hadn’t changed. The beat grew stronger as they approached the front door, rattling her teeth, and she clenched her jaw tight to stop the trembling.

As Ginny attempted to observe their surroundings (which were impossible to see over the tall hedges that lined the driveway), Hermione cast spells to dry off both women. By the time they finally reached the entrance to the manor, they were not much drier than they’d been before.

“I’m afraid that’s the best I can do,” Hermione said, her hair still dripping.

Ginny hardly noticed her own soaked hair and clothes. A familiar rush of adrenaline and a numbing calm that commonly presented themselves when she was on assignment warred for dominance within her. Her body needed the adrenaline to stay alert, to keep her reflexes nimble, but her mind required the calmness to process her observations accurately. The anxiety caused by the dome’s heart and blood threatened to overwhelm her senses, ruining that delicate balance. She grit her teeth harder until her jaw ached.

The front door swung open on silent hinges upon their arrival, the master of the house waiting for them just on the threshold.

The Malfoy family had fled before the Battle of Hogwarts had ended, and they’d been missing for the last four years. Draco Malfoy now stood before them as if no time had passed but everything had changed, as if Ginny and Hermione had merely dropped by for some tea and gossip with his mother. Never mind that they were the last two women Narcissa Malfoy would ever approve of as visitors.

A closer perusal of him reduced Ginny to shaking knees and shallow breathing, her whole body quivering and heavy as if the very sight of him was a burden her legs could not bear. Dark magic spilled from his body like an overflowing vessel and touched her in a way that Ginny had not experienced since her first year at Hogwarts. Back then, Tom Riddle had possessed her, mind and soul, contaminating her from the inside like an infection, with all the fever and shakes associated with illness. Ginny was dismayed to experience the same symptoms now in the wake of no one more than an old nemesis.

But if the dome had not made it clear that Malfoy had evolved, the impression of him now certainly did. His magic poured off him, writhing and sentient, but smooth, purposeful, a predator stalking its prey. Ginny had never felt magic like this, a subtle seduction whispering against her skin, looking for an avenue inside her. The power overwhelmed her, and her skin flushed with heat as she simultaneously craved to be closer to Malfoy and had the urgent desire to retch.

He stood before them with a sneer on his face, as if he knew exactly how he affected Ginny. Even when his eyes weren’t trained directly on her, she found him hard to resist, her thoughts, her gaze, her body overwhelmed and consumed by him. She tore her eyes away for a moment, for one painful moment, to take a glimpse of her friend and noticed Hermione was equally overcome by his presence.

“Welcome, ladies,” he said in that same sensually dark voice the face in the gate had used. “Shall we take tea in the garden?”

Ginny closed her eyes and took a deep breath to gather herself. She would not bend to the influence of Dark magic again. Not if she could help it. But she couldn’t help but acknowledge her struggle when all she wanted was for him to never stop speaking, for his words to caress her as sensuously as the magic that emanated from his skin did. She didn’t care if he spoke the Dark Arts or more mundane invitations to tea, just please, Merlin, never let that voice stop.

They followed him down the hall, their wands trembling in their hands. By the time he led them outside, Ginny had curbed the nausea that had so swiftly plagued her and regained a semblance of control of herself. The sudden craving and desire were more difficult to repress, but she hoped she hid them well enough to keep him from noticing his effect.

Entering the garden, the turbulent sea above them and the dome of water became visible once more, and the sight of that unruly magic snapped both women out of their Malfoy-induced stupor. How had he entranced them with such ease with just his presence, just his voice?

“Tea really isn’t necessary, Malfoy. We weren’t planning to stay for long,” Hermione said in a belated response as she remembered the task they still needed to accomplish.

“Nonsense. Though I may not have displayed them much when we were at Hogwarts together, my parents did teach me my manners.” He chuckled as if he’d just shared a joke, but Ginny hadn’t caught the punchline.

He pulled out a wicker chair that sat around a glass patio table and waited for one of the women to take a seat. As if summoned by his gaze, Ginny stepped forward first to meet his challenge, and her heart leapt like an irrational fool to be closer to him. The Dark magic that emanated off him slithered in invisible tendrils across her neck and down her arms as he pushed in her chair, causing gooseflesh to pop up along her skin. His fingers trailed over her shoulders for a brief moment as he pulled away.

Instead of waiting for Malfoy to seat her as well, Hermione seated herself. As soon as Malfoy joined them, the tea kettle rose into the air and began pouring steaming streams of tea into each of their cups.

Ginny and Hermione stared at Malfoy, resolutely avoiding the tea, and he stared back expectantly.

“Feel free to do whatever it is you Aurors do to test for poisons,” he said, gesturing magnanimously in Ginny’s direction. “If I’d wanted to kill you, you would have been dead before reaching the front door.”

Though the words were true enough, Ginny knew better than to accept food or drink from a known enemy, and as many times as she and Ginny had worked together, Hermione knew how to avoid such dangers as well. _Constant vigilance._ Isn’t that what Mad-Eye Moody had often said?

Malfoy frowned when neither woman moved. “No? Suit yourself.” He lifted his teacup to his lips and drained it.

“Enough about the tea,” Hermione said. “We wanted to invite you to the Ministry to ask you a few questions. If that is inconvenient for you, maybe you would be amenable to answering some of our questions here.”

“You make it sound like you are giving me a choice.”

“It is a choice.”

Malfoy shook his head, the corners of his lips widening to reveal sharp, white teeth. “No, you’re waging war, Granger. On behalf of the Ministry.”

Hermione’s brow furrowed just as it did whenever she went on the defensive. Malfoy didn’t want to take her seriously, but Ginny knew what Hermione was like when faced with difficult people, and she always won.

“You’re talking nonsense. There’s no war anymore, which you would know if you and your parents had not disappeared before the end of the Battle of Hogwarts.”

“So you want to know where I’ve been.”

“Among other things,” Ginny said, earning his scrutiny once more.

His eyes bored through her, both as if she were nothing and everything to him. She had the distinct impression that he’d just read her, inside and out, and now he knew all her thoughts, all her emotions, the beat of her heart, the flow of her blood, the breath in her lungs—which she held instinctively as he scrutinized her. Maybe part of her was waiting for his permission to breathe again.

She sensed from the force of his gaze that he could read her mind, stop her heart, freeze the flow of her blood, as well as halt her breathing with a single thought, and she would have been elated because there was nothing she wanted more than to feel that power deep inside her. A shiver raced down her spine in terror that she would welcome her destruction simply because he was the one who wielded the magic. But perhaps she gave him too much credit. Perhaps she overestimated his abilities. It wasn’t hard to do considering all that she’d seen and felt since arriving at the gates of Malfoy Manor.

His eyes were like the sea that churned in the sky above them: dark and tumultuous, ever-changing. She could _see_ the Dark magic seething in their depths, and she felt a pull deep inside her. A part of her whispering to be set free, to combine with the frothing essence inside him. He could have asked anything of her and she would have done anything, given anything. She thought her skin would burst from the anticipation of his response—she needed to hear that voice again.

The beat grew louder between her ears.

_Da-duh. Da-duh.  
Duh da-duh duh, duh da-duh duh._

Ginny didn’t blink, she didn’t move, and Malfoy was the one who turned away first, returning his attention to Hermione, allowing Ginny to finally breathe again.

“No,” he said. “Come back when you’ve got a warrant.”

Hermione’s body tensed, but Ginny blinked in confusion. Why did she feel like Malfoy’s _No_ had been directed at her? And why did she feel so disappointed to hear it? Her body had been a tight coil of anticipation, and now the tension eased, each turn of a screw deep inside her unwinding her further.

“Fine,” Hermione said, standing.

Ginny rose from her seat as well to follow Hermione. In the distant middle of the garden, she spotted a fountain as large as a small pond and constructed of black marble. The water shooting from the center of the fountain could have more appropriately been called a geyser, and it sprayed high into the sky, reaching far above the roof of the manor, connecting with the swirling body of water above. By her observation, the fountain was the source of the sea at the top of the dome, though where the water originated from and why it existed at all were still mysteries.

Her lips tightened in disapproval that Malfoy’s uncanny presence had distracted her from her surroundings, and now she filed the image away for later, for research.

“I’ll let you show yourselves out,” Malfoy said as he poured himself another cup of tea.

Hermione and Ginny both smiled in triumph. An unchaperoned trip back through the manor would give them ample time to find something they could use to obtain a warrant.

However, Malfoy was steps ahead of them. When they opened the patio door to re-enter the manor, they were met with the driveway that led to the front gate instead.

Ginny’s fists clenched tight, frustrated with the abundance of free magic that populated the property. This was why she hated the Dark Arts. The magic made no sense. It was unpredictable and followed no rules, especially when too much of it was contained in a small space. The fact that Malfoy had enough Dark magic to overpopulate the Malfoy property and behave unpredictably suggested the magnitude of his power. There was too much magic for his body to hold, for even the grounds to hold. Perhaps that was the purpose of the dome, then. To make sure the free magic didn’t escape, to concentrate his power to a controllable area.

Hermione turned around one last time to glare at Malfoy, who smiled with insincerity at them before sipping his tea.

The two women stepped through the door and made their way back to the gate, and they only felt relief when the dome, its heartbeat, and its master were far behind them.


	2. Two

Kingsley Shacklebolt, Head of the Auror Office, steepled his fingers under his chin and rested his elbows on his desk as he stared at the Pensieve from which he, Hermione, and Ginny had just emerged. 

“I see what you mean, Weasley,” he said, a concerned wrinkle in his brow.

When Ginny had joined the ranks of the Aurors, Kingsley had taken a more distant stance with their relationship, dropping the familiarity of her first name. Harry and Ron had thought the switch quite harsh coming from someone with whom they’d had a close relationship during the war, but Ginny preferred to hear her surname spoken by her superior officer. She wasn’t the young girl she’d been at Grimmauld Place, trying to listen in on Order meetings, anymore. She’d worked long and tirelessly for her position, and that utterance of her last name was a badge that signified her status as a peer. Not merely the daughter of a friend.

She wished she could say she’d worked hard in a desire to make her family proud and become a respected Auror in her own right, but what motivated her was also what terrified her. No one could deny Ginny’s courage, skill, or professionalism. Only Ginny knew about the darkness inside her, the leftover taint from Tom Riddle’s Horcrux when his soul had possessed her eleven-year-old body. She worked so hard as an Auror to prove to herself that her bravery and goodness were true, but she also feared she was only feeding the taint with violence and chaos.

She’d been relieved when she, Kingsley, and Hermione had come out of the Pensieve, because part of her had been afraid that her colleagues would see Malfoy’s influence on her. Fortunately, most of her struggle had been internal, and the awe and fascination for Malfoy had been mirrored on Hermione’s own face.

“That should be enough for an arrest warrant, at least,” Ginny said.

“Yes, and with Ms. Granger’s help here, we may even be able to wrangle a search warrant. You saw no sign of Lucius or Narcissa Malfoy while you were there?”

“None, sir,” Hermione answered.

“Use that, then. The Malfoys are still wanted for the crimes they committed during the war. Their home is sure to have clues as to their location.” Kingsley turned back to Ginny again. “Weasley, I’m putting you in charge of the raid on Malfoy Manor. You can have your pick of Aurors and specialists, but be mindful. The Malfoys hurt a lot of people during the war. Emotions will be high when you bring the son in.”

“Yes, sir,” Ginny replied. “We won’t let you down.”

“Thank you for investigating so quickly last night, and on your day off as well.”

“It was nothing,” Hermione said with a smile. “We won’t rest until every last Death Eater is behind bars.”

“If they continue showing up dead, we won’t have any left to put behind bars. Or keep there,” Kingsley replied as he massaged his forehead.

Ginny frowned at the uncharacteristic gesture of exhaustion. “Have there been no leads on who’s killing the escaped Death Eaters?”

“No, none. I think it’s safe to assume one of their allies is hunting them down, but why? No idea yet.”

“We could—”

“No,” Kingsley interrupted Ginny. “The murdered Death Eaters are not your concern right now. You have your own assignment.

“Bring me Malfoy.”

o o o o

The atmosphere that pervaded the team as they approached the front gates of Malfoy Manor was a mixed bag of incredulity and determination.

During the day, the dome looked like a broken snow globe rather than a storm. The sea at the top of the dome no longer writhed; instead, gentle waves lapped against the wards that contained the water in its bubble shape. The sun shone through the dome, making its true nature as a ball of water obvious, and somehow ridding it of the ominous appearance from the week before.

But the beat still echoed through the countryside, even stronger now than it had been seven days ago, when Ginny and Hermione had first visited the manor alone. This time they brought Harry, Ginny’s brother Bill, and the six Aurors that had been least affected by the Malfoys during the war—and the beat pounded through all of them, rattling their hearts inside their rib cages with the force of the rhythm.

_Da-DUH. Da-DUH.  
Duh DA-duh DUH, duh DA-duh DUH._

Ginny thought she could hear a whisper wrapped in the beat, a chant that vocalized the message in each pounding boom, but the words were indiscernible even as she strained to catch them.

“What is that?” Bill asked, his eyes fastened on the dome stretching high into the sky above them. “I’ve broken some nasty curses in my career, but I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

Ginny had tried to do some research to see if there was an explanation for Malfoy’s magic, but the only information she could find referenced ancient texts and myths. Nothing of this nature had ever been seen in modern history. “The only thing I can figure,” she answered, “is that Malfoy is generating so much power, his magic has become loose and unstable. He keeps it contained with a fairly simple ward, which is the dome we see.”

Now she addressed the team as a whole. “When we step inside, you’ll feel the difference immediately. The magic—it will try to seduce you. It will be alluring, and so will he. Try not to let them affect you. Those of you that have mastered Occlumency, now is the time to use it. For the rest of us, just be cautious. The magic acts in unpredictable ways.

“Hermione, Harry, and I will take care of apprehending Malfoy. The rest of you should focus on searching the premises for any sign of Lucius and Narcissa or anything that might lead us to them. Bill here will get us through the gate should Malfoy choose not to cooperate and also help us with any curses we might come across inside the manor or on the grounds. Any questions?”

As she spoke, the eyes of her team became razor sharp in concentration, the incredulity melting into the awareness necessary to be an effective, smart Auror. No one raised their voice with a question, so Ginny nodded. “Right. Let’s go, then.”

The gate once again contorted into the shape of a pointed face, and that liquid voice flowed out from between the bars: _“Purpose?”_

Ginny pushed to the front of the group. “This is Ginevra Weasley from Auror Headquarters, Hermione Granger from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and our team. We have a warrant to search the property and for Draco Malfoy’s arrest. Let us through.”

 _“Of course,”_ the face replied in its sarcastic way.

“That was a bit too easy,” Bill said as the gates swung open.

Harry pressed close to Ginny and lowered his voice. “I don’t like this, Ginny.”

“I know,” she answered, her words clipped. “I don’t, either, but we have a job to do.”

“Hey.” Bill waved her closer to the gates where the water poured down the entrance in a waterfall. “This is a Thief’s Downfall. It’s identical to the one at Gringotts.”

“Of course it is,” Ginny said, her lips flattening into a grim line. That explained why her shield hadn’t protected her from the flow of water last week. The Downfall had rendered her spell useless. “I’m sure there are other undetectable enchantments hidden all over the property. Wands out and stay vigilant!”

As one, the team marched into the dome, becoming soaked as soon as they passed under the Downfall despite the few shield spells that were cast to prevent that very outcome. The front door of the manor opened for them just as it had opened for Hermione and Ginny the week before.

Harry frowned as his gaze swept the entrance. “He doesn’t seem to be concerned about security, does he?”

“He _did_ say to come back when we had a warrant,” Hermione said.

Harry’s expression soured. “Maybe he wants us here. This could be a trap.”

Ginny’s heart beat uncomfortably in her chest. The thought had already crossed her mind after Hermione had obtained the arrest warrant, but part of her didn’t care. Part of her craved to be near him again. Something inside her sought a reunion that repulsed her brain, but the desire overwhelmed her, squashing any rational thought.

Now she considered the lives she was endangering by bringing this team of bright, successful Aurors with her for a mission that was nearly purely selfish and absolutely reckless. But that wasn’t her fault, was it? Kingsley had given her a direct order to assemble a team for this task, and each person had accepted.

The danger of Ginny’s self-indulgence was the largest contributing factor for excluding Ron from this mission. If something happened to her hot-headed brother because she couldn’t control the darkness inside her, Ginny would never be able to forgive herself. Bill had more of a level head—she trusted him not to get himself killed over a school rivalry gone wrong.

That’s what she told herself anyway. She was fully aware of her distraction and how that distraction clouded her judgment.

“Malfoy?” Ginny called as she stepped through the entrance. “Anyone home?”

No answer.

The search warrant gave them the authority to enter the dwelling while the owner was away, so Ginny directed her team to split up and look for possible evidence. They could deal with Malfoy when he made an appearance.

“Hermione, you should stay with Bill,” Ginny said as the two of them climbed an opulent staircase to the second level of the manor. “He hasn’t been out in the field in years. He might need your help.”

“Sure, Ginny,” Hermione replied, but there was a shrewdness in her eyes, as though she knew Ginny was sending her away for Ginny’s sake, not Bill’s. However, she didn’t question Ginny’s order—they’d worked together for too long to doubt each other’s motives—and then she descended the stairs to look for Bill. 

As Ginny reached the second floor landing, her heart began to race in time with the beat that punctuated the silence and the stillness of the manor.

_Da-DUH. Da-DUH.  
Duh DA-duh DUH, duh DA-duh DUH._

The chanting she thought she’d heard earlier became a little more distinct, a murmur woven into her heartbeat, into the manor’s heartbeat. She turned right on the first floor landing for the east wing, where the whispers seemed to originate. The eyes of the portraits on the walls, eyes of Malfoys and Blacks and Lestranges and so many other familiar, dark names, followed her as she passed, roaming left to right, right to left, when she walked by. To her disbelief, the occasional Prewitt and Lupin were also featured along the walls. Ginny had always thought the Malfoys, like the Blacks, would renounce their blood-traitor relatives, and, yet, here they were featured with equal prominence to the Malfoys’ purer-blooded ancestors.

Too concerned with the chanting and the source of the beating, she didn’t notice how those painted eyes watched her.

_Da-DUH. Da-DUH.  
Duh DA-duh DUH, duh DA-duh DUH._

She followed the beating down winding corridors and through hidden passageways that revealed themselves as soon as she neared them. The manor or some other force was clearly guiding her, and she should have been more cautious, she should have taken backup with her, but she knew with a certainty she couldn’t explain that she needed to go alone. If this was a trap, she was too lost in the sound of her heartbeat to care. The manor’s heartbeat increased in speed as she drew closer to her unknown destination, which made her own heart pound harder with excitement and anxiety, until, finally, she reached a door that vibrated with the force of the beating, so hard the wood had begun to splinter.

_DaDUH, DaDUH.  
DuhDAduhDUH duhDAduhDUH._

The door opened for her, just as every other door had opened of its own accord—for her. She had just a moment to absorb what she could see of the room beyond, which was nothing, to be honest. The room was darker than the darkest night Ginny had ever experienced, a darkness that appeared solid as pitch, that threatened to suffocate her if she stepped into the room. And in the darkness: a glint.

The chanting she’d been following through the manor became distinct words, slithering into her ears, infecting her heart with a terror from which she felt disconnected:

_BEWARE! BEWARE!  
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!_

“Welcome, Weasley,” Malfoy said, his voice a velvet, seductive purr. 

He stepped out of the tar-like darkness of the room and into the light that seeped in from the open door, his eyes, indeed, flashing like molten silver, like storm-bearing clouds, like... a raging sea. Hard, but fluid. Tumultuous… but calm. Harmless, yet dangerous. His hair, too, platinum-silver like a newly-minted Sickle, hung to his shoulders and all but glowed in the soft light of the wall sconces that illuminated the corridor.

Malfoy grabbed her hand so gently she hardly felt it, and he pulled her into the room. The door swung closed behind them, clicking as it locked.

Contrary to her previous thought, the darkness did not suffocate her. Instead, it engulfed her, as comforting and relaxing as a hot bath. It did not bother her that she could not see the rest of the room because the only thing she cared to see in the room was Malfoy, who the darkness could not touch. He was an empty space, devoid of light and shadow.

“You came,” he said, his lips tugging up into a sarcastic smile.

“You called.” Ginny hardly knew what she said. She was too absorbed in Malfoy’s eyes, in watching the magic writhe in the center of his pupils. They said the eyes were the windows to the soul, didn’t they? Never mind the identity of “they.” Someone had said it, and she could see the truth in those words now.

“You have something I want.” Without letting go of her hand, he stepped closer, the front of her robes just brushing the front of his suit. (Had he been wearing a Muggle suit last week? Ginny couldn’t recall.)

“And what’s that?”

_Beware! Beware!  
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!_

Her heart finally hammered in time with the beat, the chant soft as a whisper against her ears, and though she acknowledged the threat Malfoy presented, she ignored it.

He lowered his head, his fingers tracing circles against her wrist, which made her blood pound in her veins and sent a shiver through her.

And then images flashed before her eyes, and she knew he had placed them there. Images of Ginny writhing on her back while Malfoy hovered over her, her mouth hanging open in an ‘O’ of bliss while screams of pleasure were ripped from her lips.

She didn’t just see these images—she felt them. As she watched, the sensation of hungry kisses traveled over her breasts and then south, across her stomach, over her belly button, down down down to the swell of her dripping sex.

The only contact between them was where Malfoy’s hands grasped hers, still massaging the sensitive skin of her wrist and palm in circles. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t touching her elsewhere, she could _feel_ his tongue sweeping along her slit. She could _feel_ him sucking her dry as if she was staring at the top of his head instead of gazing directly into his fathomless eyes.

She shuddered, her body crumpling under the devious sensations overwhelming her body, but he caught her in his arms and pulled her close enough to feel the effect _she_ was having on him.

“I can rid you of your darkness,” he said, his voice a warm, deep caress that made her body tremble harder combined with the aftershocks of that imaginary tongue. “I sense it, the stain on your soul, and I can free you from it.”

His words recalled the memory of the charming, handsome teenager to whom she had poured her heart and soul, nearly to a fatal consequence, and she shuddered again, this time her abhorrence overcoming the sexual desire that had suddenly plagued her.

She rebuffed Malfoy’s advances, slipping out of his arms with more ease than she’d expected considering her trembling knees and how tightly he’d held her against him.

“What do you know about my soul?” she snarled. Her mind suddenly cleared, and she took the warning laced within the manor’s heartbeat more seriously than she had before.

“It calls to me,” he answered, his flashing eyes now cold and distant. “Only I can relieve you of your burden.”

She fought back her intrigue. She’d learned a thing or two about Dark magic that night in the Chamber of Secrets, but she’d learned even more during Auror training. The fundamental rule of the Dark Arts stipulated that the magic came with a price. She’d experienced that herself her first year at Hogwarts.

Her soul had fed Tom Riddle’s existence, and darkness had filled the void left behind. What could Draco Malfoy give her to replace the Dark magic he took from her? There was nothing of equal value to her soul that he could offer. There was nothing that could make her whole again.

Ginny drew her wand, the trance broken enough now to remember her duty. “No. By order of the Minister of Magic, Draco Malfoy, you are under arrest for crimes committed during the war. Will you comply?”

His lips widened into a toothy smile, and he offered her his hands. “Yes.”

With a jab of her wand, his wrists and ankles were shackled together, and then she sent a Patronus to her team with the message that she’d apprehended the target. She unlocked the door and pushed him out into the corridor, but as soon as her hand touched him, she was struck with the sudden desire to join him again, to ride him, to climb inside him, mind and soul and flesh. As swiftly as the hunger had shocked her, it disappeared, leaving her hands trembling.

She balled her hands into fists so he wouldn’t see what he’d done to her and directed him down the hall.


	3. Three

Malfoy stared at his reflection in the one-way mirror as if he could see right through it. 

Ginny knew he couldn’t see her, he couldn’t know she was there on the other side watching him, but she still had the impression that he was staring at her, deep into her soul as if a wall and some glass didn’t separate them. The back of her neck prickled and her body tensed in anticipation of a shiver that never actualized. She felt like she was on the verge of a breakthrough, though she didn’t know what kind.

“Are you ready?” Kingsley placed a hand on her shoulder, drawing her away from the glass.

Hermione and Harry both looked grim, but Hermione nodded and followed Ginny to the door next to the window.

They paused as they entered the interrogation room and closed the door behind them. The room was supposed to be brightly lit with sconces on each wall, but shadows danced along the walls, dimming the light though the flames never flickered. There seemed to be a film over Ginny’s eyes, the colors dulled and filtered in shades of gray.

Malfoy sat in the middle of the room, his lips curved up in a short smile, and Ginny knew he was the reason for the stanched light.

Hermione sat down across the table from him while Ginny remained standing, leaning against the wall next to the observation window. Both women ignored the looming shadows even though their presence was nearly tangible. The film didn’t only cover Ginny’s eyes; she felt the darkness coating her skin, caressing her arms, her stomach, her thighs, circling and exploring her limbs until Ginny’s concentration wavered from the task at hand to her sensitive flesh.

Hermione offered Malfoy a cold smile. “Sorry for the lackluster homecoming. Had you left the country on better terms, we might have given you a better welcome.”

“On the contrary. I found my reception more pleasant than anticipated.” His grin widened and his eyes darted to Ginny for a moment that sucked the breath out of her lungs and stopped her heart.

When it started beating again, it had picked up a new rhythm:

_Da-duh. Da-duh.  
Duh da-duh duh, duh da-duh duh._

How easily he assumed control of the wretched muscle.

“Where have you been for the last four years?” Ginny asked without preamble, her voice unexpectedly gruff.

The beat raked against her nerves, setting her on edge. At Malfoy Manor, the pounding rhythm had been an all-encompassing presence, a sound, a feeling, a pulse that clearly originated from the dome, from the landscape, from the manor, but seized her body as its vessel. Now her body throbbed with it, every biological process within her moving to the beat, radiating the beat. She wasn’t just the instrument—she was the source. And her fingers clenched into fists to keep herself from ripping at her skin to rid herself of the beat, to release it.

“My parents took me abroad to recover from the trauma we endured during the war. As you can imagine, remaining in the same country where our family was terrorized would not have been conducive to a successful recovery.”

“And what about all the people you terrorized?” Ginny’s voice was more stable when she spoke this time, but she crossed her arms over her chest, as if at any moment she would vibrate into pieces and the only way to stop it was to hold herself together.

Hermione stared at Malfoy, entranced, but she didn’t seem to have the same difficulty Ginny did. She sat calmly, her body still, her eyes glued to Malfoy, transfixed on his mouth.

Thinking about his mouth made Ginny more aware of it, the shape of it, the fullness of his bottom lip, the way it formed words and stretched into a smirk….

“ _I said_ I haven’t terrorized anyone.” Malfoy emphasized his words, said them slower, until Ginny realized he was repeating himself. She’d been so focused on his lips, she’d missed his response to her question.

Tendrils of the magic she’d felt at Malfoy Manor wrapped around Ginny’s wrists like hands that threatened to restrain her. Instead, the magic inched up her arms, leaving goosebumps in its wake and generating a burning heat in her veins in anticipation of the magic’s caress against her skin.

Distracted, Ginny abandoned her current line of questioning for a new one.

“Why… why did you… return now?” she asked, gasping. Her knees began to buckle beneath her as an invisible hand, as gentle as a whisper or a thought, palmed her breasts, teasing a taut nipple through her bra.

And then the sensation of teeth nipped at her sensitive skin, a mouth latched onto her breast and sucked, and the invisible hand began to wander lower down her body, beyond the soft swell of her tummy, across the mound of her sex, until mischievous fingers dipped under the fabric of her knickers and pressed against her wet center.

If Malfoy had answered her question, Ginny wasn’t aware of it. Her eyelids fluttered closed to avoid the distraction of the dimly lit room, to forget that Hermione was there in the room with her. The only thing she cared about was the pressure being applied to her clit at that moment and the way her blood pounded through her body.

_Da-duh. Da-duh.  
Duh da-duh duh, duh da-duh duh._

It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. She needed hands and teeth and tongue and skin, the feel of an actual person pressing against her, pushing her down, restraining her, _taking her_ —

“Weasley! _Ginny!_ ”

Her eyes popped open to find Kingsley standing in front of her, his large hands on her upper arms as if he’d just been shaking her. His eyes were narrowed, possibly in concern, but Ginny couldn’t tell.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she said, batting his hands away and retreating from the wall, out of her boss’s reach.

It was a lie. She was not fine. Her knees were still shaking, and her thighs were slick underneath the cover of her robes, her knickers drenched through. Her heart continued to pound in the unnatural beat she now associated with Malfoy, which pushed her further to the edge. Further… but not quite far enough for satisfaction.

Malfoy smiled at her over Hermione’s shoulder.

“Take a break, Weasley,” Kingsley said. His tone brooked no argument, so Ginny slipped out the door, not that she wanted to argue anyway. Not that she could.

Her mouth was dry as a desert, and she needed a moment, just a moment of quiet and privacy. Just the thought of her fingers finishing what Malfoy had started wracked her body with shivers, but she needed more.

She needed him.

Yes. She needed him.

His long, refined fingers ripping her robes off her body, buttons popping and flying everywhere. His lips against her neck, tasting the skin of her jaw. His hands mapping her body, memorizing her curves, exploring her crevices. The scent of him enveloping her as he pounded into her from behind or over a table or against a wall. Or even in a bed. She didn’t care how—she just needed it.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Harry,” Ginny snapped. And then she shook her head, shaking the pervasiveness of Malfoy’s magic off her as best as she could. She looked Harry in the eye. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

Harry’s hand rose as if to comfort her, and Ginny drew back, automatically hating the very idea. Not Harry. _Malfoy._ Malfoy’s was the touch she needed.

“Potter, take over for Weasley,” Kingsley instructed as he exited the interrogation room himself.

“Good luck,” Ginny mumbled, distracted by the sensations still coursing through her, searching for completion. _Not yet. Soon._

She pulled her attention back to her surroundings with the same ease as someone attempting to see through a fog. Her mind was clouded, but every moment that passed after leaving the interrogation room brought more clarity, until focusing was no longer such a difficult task. She stood next to Kingsley and watched Harry and Hermione conduct the interrogation through the observation window.

Still seated at the table across from Malfoy, Hermione asked, “When did you last see your parents?”

“About a year ago.” Malfoy directed his answer at Harry, who stood on the side of the room, easily visible to those observing through the window. “I left them when I realized I’d… outgrown them.”

“Outgrown them,” Harry repeated, deadpan.

“I felt stifled. They’d taken me away from my homeland, away from everything I knew, and I’d indulged them for more than three years. I needed space from them. I needed to deal with my trauma on my own terms.”

Kingsley grunted in surprise, an emotion Ginny shared. Malfoy’s candor was unexpected and somewhat suspicious. Had Hermione asked the one question he felt free to answer? Was Malfoy only choosing to cooperate because Harry was now interrogating him instead of Ginny? Or was Malfoy simply lying, spinning a sad tale that he thought Harry wanted to hear?

“A-And how did you do that?” Hermione asked.

Malfoy’s head swiveled in her direction, his expression full of condescension. Even through the mirrored window, Ginny felt the weight of his gaze as if he was directing it at her instead of her partner. “Do what?”

“How did you deal with your trauma?”

Malfoy smiled, suddenly reticent.

Silence reigned inside the interrogation room, with Hermione and Harry’s eyes fixed on Malfoy, and Malfoy’s lingering on the walls and the shadows that circled the room.

Ginny noticed Harry before Kingsley did, her eyes drawn to the way Harry’s cheeks bloomed with color and his mouth fell open with panting breaths. His eyelids drifted, until his gaze became half-lidded—an expression Ginny remembered well from the bedroom. The sight of it now, here, at work, sent a shot of desire through Ginny’s body, hot and fast, making her fingers and toes tingle.

It wasn’t because of Harry that she was affected in such a way. No. She knew Malfoy was the cause of Harry’s ardor, just as she’d known he’d caused the same sensations in her each time they’d met face to face. The idea that he could boil Harry’s blood—straight-laced, professional Harry—as well as hers, sent another thrill through her.

Harry’s shoulders fell back against the wall for support. Ginny couldn’t see his knees shaking under his robes, but she saw something else, something that did not go unnoticed by Kingsley, either.

“For the love of Merlin!” Kingsley said as he rushed to the door.

The front of Harry’s robes tented with a hidden erection, and his hands, splayed against the wall on either side of him, shook as if it took all his willpower not to touch his own body.

Kingsley crashed into the interrogation room and bound Malfoy’s arms and legs with a flick of his wand and escorted him back out, presumably to return him to the temporary cells down in Level Ten.

As soon as Malfoy vacated the room, Harry’s knees collapsed and he slid to the floor with a groan while Hermione stood up and looked straight at Ginny through the mirrored window. Her eyes were wide and wild, her own cheeks pink, her lips parted in shock, but she looked nowhere near as affected as Harry. She didn’t seem to suffer the same way Ginny had when Kingsley had pulled her out of the interrogation.

Hadn’t Hermione felt Malfoy’s influence?

It took Harry several moments to compose himself enough to rise and exit the room, and as he did, his eyes met Ginny’s. Both of them blushed, remembering nights of passion they’d shared during their short-lived relationship after the war. Those moments, of course, had been private and intimate, and Malfoy had drawn their reactions out of them in the sterile, professional environment of their workplace, in front of their friend and their superior.

It was obvious by Hermione’s confused but sympathetic expression that she hadn’t shared their experience, and in their single, wordless, embarrassed gaze, Ginny and Harry agreed to never speak of this event again.

 _“Beware, beware. His flashing eyes, his floating hair,”_ Ginny muttered, her eyes following Harry down the corridor as he made a hasty exit to fix the amorous situation under his robes.

“I didn’t know you liked Coleridge,” Hermione said, her sudden appearance at her side startling Ginny.

“What?”

“The poem you were just reciting. It’s “Kubla Khan” by Coleridge, isn’t it?”

Perplexed over Hermione’s familiarity with the phrase, Ginny answered honestly. “I don’t know. It’s something I heard at Malfoy Manor.”

“You heard it?”

“The words were chanted along with that beat we felt emanating from the dome. I’d never heard them before today.”

Hermione bit her lip, her brow creasing and her eyes wandering in that way they did when chasing a stray but important thought. “Unfortunately, I don’t remember much of the poem besides that last part. Strange that you would hear Muggle literature chanted at Malfoy Manor.”

Not strange. Suspicious. “Maybe Coleridge isn’t a Muggle.”

Hermione’s eyes widened. “Oh, yes, that’s possible.” She saw a solution in Ginny’s eyes and without waiting for a request, Hermione made an offer. “Shall I look for that particular book when I get home and send it to you?”

“Yes, I don’t think we’re through with Coleridge just yet.”

o o o o

Ginny waited until the hubbub of the workday died down before weaving her way through aisles of empty cubicles to the lifts. She wasn’t sure why she’d waited until after business hours to make this trip. A voice inside her, a piece of her that guided her instinct out in the field, had urged her to be patient. She’d listened, and as the lift doors clanged open on Level Nine, she became aware of the danger of facing Malfoy alone after everyone had gone home.

Still, she descended the stairs that connected Level Nine to the dungeons of Level Ten, where the courtrooms and temporary prison cells were located. Her heart beat no harder or faster than it would have if she’d gone up to Level Two to see her dad, though she knew by the way her bones grew ice-cold that she should have been afraid.

If not of Malfoy, then of how he made her feel and the thoughts that he inspired.

Instead of fear, she tasted anticipation on her tongue, sticky sweet and difficult to swallow as it coated her esophagus. A shiver wracked her frame at the thought of Malfoy’s presence washing the anticipation down.

At a table that blocked the door leading to the cells, a lone Hit Wizard sat on guard duty, her face buried behind a newspaper.

“Auror Weasley to see Draco Malfoy,” Ginny announced, startling the guard. She signed her name on a visitors log and then turned over her wand before being admitted through the door.

The darkness that greeted her resembled the darkness of the interrogation room. Shadows shifting on the walls of their own accord dulled the light from the torches that lined the corridor like a film over her vision. Ginny couldn’t shake the impression of walking into a fog or cobwebs, the shadows visible and intangible but still inspiring gooseflesh to rise on her skin.

Malfoy sat on his bed, staring through the bars of his cell as if he’d been waiting for her. Perhaps he had. Now the speed of her heartbeat increased, galvanized by the sight of him, his flashing eyes, his long, platinum hair. His hands, pale white where they rested on his knees, contrasted with the material of his black suit. His head and hands seemed to float in the darkness he engendered.

“I have more questions,” Ginny said without waiting for his sarcastic greeting.

“I knew you would,” he replied, his lips quirking up in a genuinely pleased expression.

Alone without witnesses, in the dungeons of the Ministry where he didn’t have to put on a show and Ginny wasn’t forced to perform, she knew she could ask him any question and he would be more likely to answer her truthfully. She should have revisited the questions from the failed interrogation, but that tainted part inside of her sneered at the idea. She had Malfoy at her mercy, no school nemeses around to antagonize or distract them. She _should_ have been a good Auror and completed her job, but sometimes being good was so tiring and thankless. Instead, she was selfish.

“What did you do to Harry and me today? Why wasn’t Hermione affected the same way?”

“I told you,” he answered. “I can rid you of your darkness. You and Potter both carry it with you still. Even though the Dark Lord is dead, he still lives on in anyone he ever marked. That includes you, who housed his soul so temporarily, and Potter, his accidental Horcrux of seventeen years. Yes, I know all about that. I did my homework while I was abroad.”

A tingle raced up Ginny’s spine. How much did Malfoy know about the Chamber of Secrets and the role she and Tom Riddle had played in it? Professor Dumbledore had promised her that her possession and the acts she'd committed under Tom’s influence would remain a secret from her classmates. But he knew all about Voldemort’s Horcruxes, an important aspect of the war that the Ministry had chosen not to make public knowledge. If Malfoy was aware of Harry’s role as Voldemort’s eighth Horcrux, he was most certainly aware of Harry and Ginny’s part in discovering and destroying the diary Horcrux as well.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” she said, gritting her teeth against her past, against a tide that rose up inside her, aching to be freed from the confines of her flesh. The waves beat against her bones in time with the beat she’d heard at Malfoy Manor, and the words echoed in her mind.

_Beware! Beware!  
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!_

She’d absorbed the beat and carried it with her. That was the only way to explain its presence now and in the interrogation room earlier.

Malfoy’s gaze met hers, knowing without words about the storm raging within her, and in that moment, Ginny wanted to resent him for bringing her past to the surface, forcing her to acknowledge it. She couldn’t completely blame him, though. The memory of Tom Riddle was never far from her mind, even now, a decade after she emerged from the Chamber of Secrets, a little broken, her soul tainted. An incomplete child.

He rose from the bed and approached the bars. He could have reached out and touched Ginny, as close as she stood to him, and she wanted that. More than anything she wanted his touch to soothe the tsunami inside her.

He kept his hands to himself.

“I can remove the stain on your soul. I can also manipulate it. Joy—”

The tide surged in euphoria, and Ginny wobbled on her feet from the force of it.

“—anger, jealousy—”

Wrath pounded against her heart, apropos of nothing. Her hands shook with the urge to wrap them around someone’s neck—but whose?

Harry’s. Harry deserved to have the life squeezed out of him for daring to try to take Malfoy from her, for thinking, even for a moment, that Malfoy would ever indulge him with the pleasures of his fingers or tongue, for having the arrogance to flaunt his lust in front of her during the interrogation….

“And, yes,” Malfoy whispered, “even lust. All your emotions are at my disposal as long as that darkness remains inside you.”

Her skin bloomed with heat at the sound of that word on his lips. _Lust_. She swayed closer to the bars, her eyelashes fluttering, her chest heaving.

He wrapped his fingers around hers where she clung to the bars, and with gentle strokes, he warmed her cold digits. The gesture brought another activity to mind, which sent a wave of desire through her and spurred her to close the gap between them as much as possible.

Their lips pressed together, and his hands reached down for her waist, tugging her as tight against his body as he could so that the bars pressed against her, reminding her of the obstacles separating them.

Even with her eyes closed, she sensed the shadows around them swirling faster, taking the shape of animated demons celebrating their union along the walls, the floor, the ceiling. They made an imprint on the inside of her eyelids, forcing her to see them even when she chose to be sightless.

His lips were surprisingly gentle, even when his grip held her like iron. Each caress, each nip, each sweet stroke of his tongue, made the storm inside her surge higher, made her defenses falter.

He pulled away first, two large steps backwards accompanying the end of the kiss as he stared at her, his eyes stormy themselves. Uncertainty crossed his features for a moment before he contorted his expression into the one she’d seen a hundred times since meeting him again last week: aloof, with that cliched smirk adorning his lips.

“Think about it, Weasley,” he said. “Think of the things I could give you as well as take away.”

Without a moment of hesitation, she replied, “I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm hoping to get back to The Dating Charade really soon! I just need to rewrite most of the 3,000 words I've already written of chapter 14, and, as you can imagine, that's really discouraging, so I've been avoiding it. :/


	4. Four

Ginny did think about Malfoy’s offer. That night and all through Friday, her thoughts remained with Malfoy in a distracted haze. His kiss had awakened something inside her, something that worried her. Sometimes, on Friday, in quiet moments in the office or at night while preparing for bed, she felt an itch under her skin. Something alive just beneath the surface crawled up her arms and over her hips and down her legs, looking for an avenue of escape. Several times throughout the day, she had to stop whatever she was doing and just hold herself as she waited for the sensation to pass. 

Was this it, then? Was this the leftover taint from Tom Riddle’s possession reactivated and seeking control? Had Malfoy done this to her, or had he simply foreseen it?

Friday night, Ginny lay in bed with her eyes closed, but unable to sleep. The itch began at the base of her skull and skittered around her neck to the underside of her ear. She put a hand over it as if her touch could stop it, squash it like a bug, but it evaded her fingers and traveled along the edge of her jaw, down her throat, over the soft mounds of her breasts. Ginny sucked in a breath as the itch turned into something less unpleasant and more promising. Her breathing hitched as the sensation slowed down and made a straight path directly down, tickling her belly button, teasing the line of skin just above the waistband of her knickers, until it slipped under. She clenched her thighs together, but the itch couldn’t be deterred.

A circling stroke around her clit made her dig her heels into the mattress. The sensation of a tongue against the sensitive nub made her hips buck. An anguished moan escaped her lips as she tried to relieve some of the pressure with her fingers, but her own touch did nothing for her, and the itch was relentless but unsatisfying. She needed the man whose kiss tasted of danger and promise and release.

After a frustrating night, Ginny woke up on Saturday with resolve.

Since the summer after her first year at Hogwarts, she’d feared a part of Tom Riddle still lived on inside her. She hadn’t been sure how she’d known, only that her dreams were filled with him, and her thoughts and reactions had become more vicious afterward. She’d snapped at people for harmless comments, raised her wand with a hex as an instinctual response to a slight, gloried in other peoples’ embarrassments and failures. Eventually, as she’d grown older, she’d learned how to control these impulses, learned how to mold herself into the sociable, happy girl everyone expected her to be. But that meanness had lingered inside her, dormant but not fully suppressed.

She wanted it gone. She wanted, for the first time since she was ten years old, to be herself again, to not have to try so hard to be _good_. Was it as much of a struggle for Harry as it was for her? Did he labor over the decision between choosing what was right and what was easy? Another part of her had feared that the darkness became her and none of this mattered. That Ginny Weasley with Tom Riddle’s influence was the exact same person she would have been without it.

She never again wanted her body to be used against her, the way Tom had physically manipulated her when she was eleven and the way Malfoy had emotionally manipulated her Thursday night.

She also wanted to relieve her sexual frustration, preferably with Malfoy against a wall, and she didn’t see why she couldn’t have everything. The whole world, even.

She went back and forth on her next plan of action all morning until, finally, she threw her Auror robes over her pajamas with the intention of paying Malfoy another visit at the Ministry. Her mission was briefly deterred as an owl swooped into her flat through the window above the kitchen sink and crash landed on her dining room table.

Pigwidgeon hooted as he hopped right back up, hovering in the air around Ginny’s head as he clutched in his tiny talons the twine that tied closed the paper wrapping of a parcel. (Undoubtedly, the package was charmed to weigh as much as a feather for ease of delivery, which screamed Hermione as the sender.)

Ginny shooed him back out the window, too impatient to reward him with treats and head scratches for his successful delivery as she’d normally give him. The bird was in her way; she needed to know who she was when untainted now.

Six letters written on the brown wrapping gave her pause, the sight of the U, R, G, E, N, and T making the itch manifest at the base of her spine.

She ripped the paper off a blue leather bound tome entitled _The Complete Poetical Works of the Romantic Era, Volume IV_ , and a smaller scrap of parchment floated onto the tabletop. Hermione’s unusually messy hand scribbled all over the paper suggested she’d written her note in a hurry.

_Ginny,_

_The poem I mentioned yesterday is on page 348. If you find it as alarming as I did, I’ll meet you at work._

_Harry just informed me that Malfoy was released yesterday afternoon, and all charges against him from the war were dismissed. I’ll be hanging around the Ministry all day until someone can explain this travesty to my satisfaction. I hope we haven’t lost him on a technicality. I was really looking forward to prosecuting his case in court._

_-Hermione_

Ginny should have been enraged at losing Malfoy and this case. Instead, she thought about the convenience of visiting him at Malfoy Manor, and she was grateful to have a private audience with him, outside of the Ministry and its prying eyes and all-encompassing ears.

She went into her living room and lowered herself onto the sofa as she opened the book and turned to page 348.

Kubla Khan  
or  
A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment.

The poem was short, but as she read each line, her heartbeat quickened, the rhythm of the infernal organ evolving into the beat that had captured and distressed her since that fateful night just over one week prior. Certain words stood out to her as all too familiar.

Dome.

Sea.

Gardens.

Fountain.

Shadow.

And then she read the final lines, which sent a shiver through her, making the hair all over her body stand on end.

_And all should cry, Beware! Beware!_  
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!  
Weave a circle round him thrice,  
And close your eyes with holy dread  
For he on honey-dew hath fed,  
And drunk the milk of Paradise. 

Yes, Ginny was quite alarmed. Alarmed and intrigued.

Malfoy had drunk the milk of Paradise, and now he ruled from his pleasure-dome, even though the Malfoy dome was not quite the visage described by Coledridge. Unless they were underground, Ginny had not seen any caverns or rivers on the property, and in the middle of the countryside, forests were hard to come by. But it was as clear to her as it was to Hermione that Malfoy had brought “Kubla Khan” to life.

Or had “Kubla Khan” brought Malfoy to life?

Her heart beat against her sternum, and Ginny filled in the warning her heart couldn’t voice:

_Beware! Beware!_

She would not beware. She was not afraid.

She didn’t see herself in the Abyssinian maid, but Ginny knew as surely as she knew her name that she was part of whatever was happening.

_...beneath a waning moon was haunted  
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!_

Yes, perhaps that described her. As she recalled the words, her blood began to call, to sing, to wail. She wouldn’t be meeting Hermione at the Ministry today because, in fact, she didn’t care why Malfoy had been released from custody. Suddenly, the only thing that mattered was Malfoy and what he could do for her.

She’d witnessed the lengths of his power, the enormity of it, and she had no doubt that Malfoy could do as he’d said. He could remove the darkness from her soul. He could fix her.

_His flashing eyes, his floating hair!_

Just the thought of those eyes made her thighs clench together. Her errand had been delayed long enough. She needed to see him. Now.

Ginny returned to her closet and dug around until she found something snug and satin to change into before brushing her hair and her teeth. A little lipstick and a pair of heels completed the impromptu outfit. One look in the mirror set her at ease somehow. She ran her hands down the seams of the form-fitting dress that hugged her like a second skin.

Green. Malfoy might like that.

And then she Apparated to Malfoy Manor.

o o o o

_“Purpose?”_ the iron face asked with a lazy drawl.

“Ginevra Weasley here to shag the fuck out of Draco Malfoy.”

The gates instantly swung open without comment, and Ginny charged through the gate and the Thief's Downfall. She couldn’t bring herself to care when she was instantly soaked in the downpour. Her heels squelched with each step, but she strode down the lane with her shoulders thrown back and her head high. She didn’t think she’d be wearing the wet articles of clothing for very long anyway.

The beat tugged at her heart, urging the organ to pound in time with the chant that echoed through Ginny’s brain.

_Beware! Beware!  
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!_

Her eyes were drawn to her surroundings, and she saw the dome, the sea above her head, the tall hedgerows that lined each side of the driveway, and the manor itself in a different light. A poetic and less fearsome light. A niggling doubt burrowed beneath her breast bone, radiating with more certainty with each beat of the dome, with each step she took closer to the manor. Had it been the Dark Arts that had truly recreated Coleridge’s poem in the Wiltshire countryside? For what purpose would Malfoy go through the trouble?

The front door flew open before Ginny could complete her second knock, and Malfoy stood in the foyer, shadows converging around him. His eyes glittered with something feral, something Ginny would almost call hopeful, though she didn’t dare.

“That was quite an announcement,” he said, eyeing her from her drenched hair to her soaking toes.

“Shut up,” she replied before leaning up and capturing his lips with hers.

He reeled backward, and the door slammed behind them as Ginny cleared the entryway, but they paid no mind to any potential interruptions. She’d caught him off guard for a single moment. After that moment passed, he was in control of himself once more.

She gasped against his mouth when his hands slid up the backs of her thighs and attempted to push up her dress. The wet material resisted, plastering itself to Ginny’s bum, but Malfoy was persistent. He lodged his hands under the satin and shoved it up, her arse spilling out of the confines of her tight dress for him to cup. He squeezed and pulled her tight against him, just as he had in the dungeons of the Ministry two nights ago. Only this time, the only bar that separated them was the erection pressed against her stomach.

A purr came out of Ginny’s throat, and she surprised Malfoy for the second time by twining her fingers through his long hair just to yank his head back toward her until their lips met.

Eyes closed, she felt her world shift as he hefted her weight, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, her dress now shoved up somewhere above her bellybutton. He pulled his lips off hers to carry her up the stairs without falling, but Ginny didn’t let his momentary inattention deter her. She kissed the line of his jaw, sucked the salt off his skin just behind his ear, caressed his scalp with her fingernails, anything to spur him on, to remind him of the pleasure that awaited both of them.

Shadowy figures danced and swirled along the walls around them, laughing, tittering, taunting the two lovers as they ascended to Malfoy’s room.

Light eviscerated the pitch darkness of his bedroom when they entered, but Ginny didn’t concern herself with observing the decor. She only had eyes for Malfoy, who only had eyes for her.

Stormy, half-lidded eyes as he set her back on her feet.

Voracious eyes as she stroked her own breast with one hand and trailed a finger down his fully-clothed chest with the other.

Ginny couldn’t explain what had compelled her to forsake her duty and come to Malfoy Manor, except that it was Malfoy’s doing. For over a week, a rhythm had moved her, mind and body, bringing her together with Malfoy over and over again. For the last two nights, an itch had spurred her into action. Instincts honed from Auror training told her this was no accident. Yes, she’d come to Malfoy to take him up on his offer to rid her of Tom Riddle’s taint, but a subtle magic must have opened her mind to accepting.

A good girl would not dabble in the Dark Arts, no matter how tempting the offer, but Ginny knew she wasn’t a good girl. Not without effort. She also knew Malfoy could manipulate the dark side of her.

And suddenly, now that she stood in Malfoy’s arms, she didn’t care.

“What have you done to me?” she asked, her voice full of wonder. Standing next to a sumptuous bed, her blood began to boil in her veins, her heart pounding away to the beat of the dome in the same rhythm she hoped their bodies would mimic when he finally penetrated her. She hoped the whole bed would shake with the rhythm. The whole house united under the same heartbeat.

“That’s the astounding thing,” Malfoy said, a desperate starvation glittering in his storm-colored eyes. “I haven’t done anything to you yet.”

“You must have.” She growled when the zipper of her dress caught, and after two failed attempts at getting the zipper down, she pulled her wand out of a cleverly concealed pocket and Vanished the rest of her clothes in an instant. As soon as she exposed her skin to the air, goosebumps pimpled her flesh. Needless to say, Malfoy’s gaze soared straight to her pert, pink nipples, and Ginny could only smirk in satisfaction. “For the last week, you’re all I’ve thought about.”

His long fingers undid his necktie, and a wave of desire made Ginny’s knees wobble just imagining the use to which they could put the length of silk later. She helped him with his jacket and shirt buttons, her fingers trembling with impatience.

“Like calls to like,” Malfoy said in response to her earlier admission.

Ginny hardly heard him. The action of unfastening his belt buckle proved to be quite the distraction. Not that she was interested in conversation at this point anyway.

He kept his eyes fastened on her face—though she had no idea of his expression, preoccupied as she was—as he pulled down his trousers, his erection bouncing free and bobbing between them.

Her smirk widened when she couldn’t stop herself from comparing Malfoy’s cock to Harry’s. There was really no comparison at all. The length and girth of Malfoy would have put Harry to shame.

And then she surprised him for the third time when she shoved him down onto the bed before climbing on top to straddle him. Her skin was still damp from the Thief’s Downfall, but the inside of her thighs were slick for a different reason entirely, and Malfoy made a guttural sound as she lifted herself off him just enough to spread her slickness along his aching cock without letting him enter her. Not yet. Not until he begged her for it.

Had she known better, she would have realized Malfoy wouldn’t beg, and he didn’t like to have what he wanted dangled in front of him. Before a cheeky taunt could pass her lips, Malfoy flipped her over onto her back, his cock hilt-deep inside her in one smooth stroke.

The storm that had battered her from within since the interrogation two days ago suddenly calmed, no longer thrashing against her bones and barriers to be released. A whimper passed her lips at the difference. Her equilibrium adjusted as though she’d been rocking on a ship sailing a stormy sea, and now she stood on dry land.

The itch under her skin, however, only became more agitated.

“Think you can tease me, do you?” Malfoy said through clenched teeth.

A moan was torn from her throat as flesh slapped against flesh with each exquisite thrust of his hips.

He slowed his movements just to torture her further by grinding his pelvis against her mound, just above the sensitive bud of her clit. _“Answer me.”_

 _“No,”_ she groaned. “I wouldn’t—I couldn’t—” Words failed her.

He maintained his current agonizing pace. Pounding, grinding, pushing her to the edge before slowly pulling out, and then thrusting again, until the tempo of the dome’s heartbeat increased—a pulse of ecstasy radiated through her core—his hand reached between them to tease her clit and—

A gasp. A groan. A violent tremor wracked her body, pulses of hot ecstasy racing through her veins. Ginny’s body became limp except for the subsequent waves of aftershocks, and his limbs trembled with the torture of his impending climax.

Without warning, his thrusts accelerated, his hips jerked erratically, and then he roared with his release, his head thrown back revealing the column of his neck. Ginny clenched her thighs around his body, coaxing rasping breaths out of him that were accompanied by low groans, until he finally collapsed on top of her, each gasp hot against her breast.

She ran her fingers through his hair and smiled. _Pleasure-dome, indeed._

o o o o

She awoke some hours later to his cock entering her from behind while he cradled her against his chest. One of his arms hitched her leg up under her knee for better access as he rocked in and out of her, his bollocks slapping against her sensitive flesh.

He grunted when her moan revealed herself to be awake but didn’t slow his momentum. In fact, he pounded into her with the singular attention of a man obsessed.

“Do you want this?” he asked through a clenched jaw.

“Yes. Yes. _Yes._ ”

“Say it,” he growled.

“I want this. I want you. Don’t fucking stop!”

He didn’t. He dug his toes into the mattress for better leverage, and he didn’t stop until his body tensed and the muscles in his thighs quivered. Then he was filling her, but Ginny wasn’t there yet. Her hand reached between her legs, and it only took two gentle strokes of her clit for her to trigger the tidal wave of bliss that suddenly drowned her. She was happy to drown.

In the aftermath of her orgasm, Ginny’s eyes drifted closed, and she fell asleep once more, Draco’s arms locked around her possessively, the itch under her skin satiated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can read "Kubla Khan" [here](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43991)! One more chapter to go! Reviews appreciated. n_n


	5. Five

The taint that resided within her, leftover from the Dark Lord, had pledged its allegiance to him the instant he’d penetrated her. As soon as she’d surrendered to him, that’s when he’d begun to own her—mind, body, and soul. 

Weasley picked up his black shirt and pulled it on over her pale, freckled skin, only fastening the buttons halfway. She glanced at him before retreating to the bathroom, her arse cheeks peeking out from her shirttail. And damn him if he wasn’t hard again. No, damn her. He was already satisfactorily damned.

Draco had an important day ahead of him, so he wanked himself off into his bed sheet to rid himself of his amorous problem instead of waiting for Weasley to return. 

As he zipped his trousers, the bathroom door opened, but he felt her before he saw her. The shadows that were his perpetual companions grew along the lengths of the walls, dulling the natural light that streamed in from the windows. They remained formless for now, but he could sense their titters by the way they fluctuated and moved throughout the room.

Sweetness bloomed on Draco’s tongue, and he reached out with his magic to touch the darkness inside her—the darkness that now conceded to him—to reaffirm what he’d already intuited, but he wanted to hear her voice it out loud.

He did up the buttons on a fresh shirt he’d collected from his closet. “Do you regret it?” he asked with a self-assured smirk.

“No,” she said. “Do you?”

“Never.”

“Why don’t I feel any different?”

An eyebrow rose, thrown off by her question. “Pardon me?”

“You promised to rid me of Tom Riddle's taint, but I don’t feel any different than I did before.”

He allowed himself a smile, his amusement influencing the shadows to take shape. Laughing figures danced across the floor, the mussed bed, the walls, encouraged by Draco’s mood.

He put his hands on Weasley’s shoulders, his thumbs massaging the skin exposed by the unbuttoned portions of the fabric. “What we did last night was just the start. We’re not finished yet.”

Her cheeks and ears reddened, but she rolled her eyes. “Is this complicated process going to require us to fuck again?”

He put a hand under her chin and tilted her face up, capturing her gaze with his as he tasted her mood. The darkness inside her writhed with hope, amusement, and impatience. Now awakened, it would not rest until it rejoined the pool of darkness inside Draco.

No, sex wouldn’t be necessary to complete the ritual. Weasley had been primed for him before she showed up at his gates the previous day, and the sex they’d had had only frenzied her further. He could see it in her eyes, the desperation, sharp with hunger, not soft in despair. Sex wouldn’t be required to reclaim her darkness, but he certainly hoped they could make time for it again.

Willing bed partners were so difficult to come by these days when one radiated Dark magic and malice. He could certainly take what he wanted, but Draco had never had a taste for coercion. Free will had a miraculous way of inspiring creativity and unpredictability that could not be achieved if Draco used his magic to force someone into sexual submission.

In this particular instance, Weasley had to want him with every fiber of her being for the ritual to work. He had to seduce her in order for her darkness to also be seduced before he could take it from her. The longer his seduction, the easier the taint left its host. Weasley was unique in that Draco could manipulate her as well as he’d manipulated all the Death Eaters he’d killed so far even though she’d never worn the Dark Mark. That she had come to him of her own free will, with minimal manipulation on Draco’s part, had been an electrifying experience. A stronger experience somehow. Her blood would be richer because of her willingness when he spilled it.

He hoped they would have the opportunity to repeat their night together before he needed her blood.

“No,” he replied. He patted her head as though she were a charming child, and she swatted his hand away, but he sensed her disappointment and annoyance. “I have business to attend to. Will you be here when I return?”

“How long will you be gone?”

“I’ll be back as early as tonight or as late as tomorrow afternoon.”

“I’ll stay,” she said after a moment of deliberation.

He sensed no betrayal, no hint that she planned to use that time alone to plot against him. Still, before he left the manor, he installed the wards he put up specifically for house guests. She would have a hard time playing detective when every door she opened led her in the wrong direction.

o o o o

Like called to like, he’d said to her in the throes of passion, and that was true, but it required more than kindred spirits to steal a portion of someone’s soul.

The soul had to _want_ to leave—otherwise the result was the abomination the Dark Lord had become. He’d mutilated his own soul by forcefully tearing it into pieces to make his Horcruxes, twisting the soul fragments and his physical form with Dark magic.

Draco had discovered a way to gain immortality and power the Dark Lord could only dream of while retaining the wholeness of his own soul as well as his wicked good looks. The only price he’d paid had been that of the lives of everyone for whom he felt mutual love. Fortunately for him, only two such people existed. _Had_ existed. His parents had been dead for over a year now. Their bodies laid buried underneath the fountain in the back garden of Malfoy Manor, their love, their magic, and their blood sustaining Draco’s new power.

Had he truly discovered this magic, or had he created it himself? He wasn’t sure. The texts he’d uncovered had been vague and ancient, requiring keen interpretation and cross referencing with newer tomes of the Dark Arts to understand them. He’d taken information from different sources and combined them in an experiment he hadn’t been sure would work—and he’d come out the victor. So far.

Obviously he wasn’t impatient to test his immortality, but, unlike the Dark Lord, he hadn’t sought immortality in the first place. Power had been his goal, and he had more than achieved it. Never again would anyone use Draco the way the Dark Lord had used him during the war. Never again would he fear for his or his loved ones’ lives. His loved ones were safe in death, and he? He was untouchable.

Apparating onto a quiet street of townhouses, Draco strolled down the sidewalk until he spotted houses 11 and 13 sitting next to each other and stopped. It didn’t take long for Potter to appear on the sidewalk next to him, seemingly out of thin air.

“What are you doing here?” Potter asked, his voice filled with more wonder than anger.

Good. Draco had had more of an influence on Potter at the interrogation the other day than either of them had realized. Once he began a seduction, it didn’t take long for the object of his ardor to fall. But Potter was twisted up inside with the lingering effects of Dark magic. Residue from a lifetime connected to the Dark Lord coated every inch of him. His bones had absorbed it. Every time he flexed a muscle, the residue leaked out. Every hair particle and cellular block on and in his body recognized the Dark Arts when it was nearby, even if Potter wasn’t conscious of the recognition. That recognition had made him an exceptional Auror with keen instincts for Dark magic.

With his intense dislike of the Dark Arts and his Auror training, Draco had expected to need more time to successfully seduce Potter, and yet here he was, intrigued, not threatened by Draco’s presence outside his home.

Draco stretched his magic out, tiny tendrils of invisible darkness reaching toward Potter to touch the Dark magic coating his soul. When they connected, Draco coaxed Potter’s darkness to him, twisting to his advantage the latent lust Potter tried to suppress.

Potter’s face instantly flushed, his eyelids drooping though he didn’t let them close.

“Welcome to 12 Grimmauld Place. Won’t you come in?” Potter said, nearly panting with want.

The house became visible, pushing numbers 11 and 13 aside to make room, and Draco smiled as he followed his school nemesis through the door. He released his hold on Potter’s lust as soon as he stepped into the entryway. He wouldn’t need to manipulate him anymore. Potter was more than ready for him.

The Dark Lord had ruled with fear. Draco had experienced it himself when he’d been nothing but a sixteen-year-old boy, but even before then, he’d heard the frightened conversations between his parents. He’d seen the terror on their faces whenever the Dark Lord summoned his father to his side. It was fear that had inspired his mother to turn on the Dark Lord and lie to him about Potter’s death at the Battle of Hogwarts. Fear of the Dark Lord and her love for Draco. Love had conquered that night.

Draco shoved Potter against a wall and assaulted his mouth with a ruthless tongue, releasing a groan from deep in Potter’s chest that reverberated through Draco’s. Potter’s hands fisted around Draco’s lapels, pulling him closer as if to absorb Draco into him.

The easiest way to coax the Dark magic out of a person was to make it _want_ to leave the soul to which it was attached. And in doing so, he earned not only the trust and allegiance of the Dark magic itself, but also the person who housed it.

So that when he killed the object of his desire, the Dark magic would choose to join him. Like calling to like. Like joining like. Like becoming like.

And when Draco finished his mission to track down and kill every person ever possessed by the Dark Lord, every Death Eater who wore his mark, Draco would be the most powerful being in the world. He would be loved, not feared, and he would be untouchable.

o o o o

_“Weave a circle ‘round him thrice,”_ Ginny mumbled as she stared at the fountain in the back garden. From her vantage point in the third floor parlor, the geyser of water was even more impressive than it had been at ground level. From here she was able to get a better picture of the fountain and how it connected to the storming sea at the top of the dome. The way the water shot up into the sky and cascaded back down, perpetually fueling the sea with more water and churning the depths with ripples and waves.

Up close, the fountain was a force and a reminder of the extensiveness of Malfoy’s newfound power. From inside the manor, Ginny felt removed from the scene, as though she was viewing a photograph of something impossible, something that had been staged.

She leaned her forehead against the window, muttering still. _“Weave a circle ‘round him thrice, and close your eyes with holy dread. Weave a circle ‘round him thrice….”_

She hadn’t lied when she’d told Malfoy she didn’t feel any different, but now that he was gone, she realized that she did. Feel different. She _was_ different. She’d spent the morning trying to find the words to explain how she’d changed, but that was exactly the problem. She felt as though she were in the middle of a transformation that had been interrupted. She was too much of _something_ to ever be able to return to the Ginny Weasley she’d been one day ago, but she wasn’t enough of whatever her final form would be, either.

Her heart had hammered in her chest all morning since Malfoy had left, beating so anxiously she couldn’t keep still. The throbbing of her heart had set her blood on fire, radiating through her veins until it reached her clit, and suddenly her body became ruled by two heartbeats.

She needed Malfoy to come back and finish what he had started.

He finally returned from wherever he’d gone a few hours later, his cheeks pink-tinged, his eyes alight. The shadows in the room instantly began to froth, buoyed by his mood.

From the chaise lounge on which she reclined, Ginny said, “I didn’t have any trouble finding the kitchen. In fact, it appeared to me right outside your bedroom door. But after lunch, I was sent on a wild goose chase around the manor.”

Malfoy smirked. “You got lost.”

Her chin lifted in an imperious tilt.

“Your intentions were dishonest, so the manor manipulated your surroundings.”

“Is it dishonest of me to wonder what happened to your parents? That’s the reason I came here last week, after all.”

Malfoy offered her his hand and pulled her to her feet when she accepted it. “Don’t worry about them. They are safe.”

“Evading justice, you mean.”

“That, too.” His fingers flew to the buttons of his robes, pale flesh revealed as each fastening popped open.

Ginny’s eyebrows rose. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He smirked at her as if she were naive, as if he was about to get his way no matter what she said. That was all the reply he gave.

She shook her head and stalked closer, lifting her hands to his chest to pull each half of his robes closed again. The hot throbbing in her sex grew stronger, and she could feel herself growing wet with desire. She wanted this, but not on his terms. “I don’t think so. I asked you before you left if we would fuck again, and as I recall, you said no.”

“That was then.”

She began to circle him, one hand never breaking contact with his body as she promenaded around him. Their gazes locked each time she came in front of him again, like magnets seeking out an object of opposite attraction. A pulse pounded through her, drumming in her ears, changing the beat of her heart.

_Da-duh. Da-duh._  
_Duh da-duh duh, duh da-duh duh._

She continued to weave her circle, thrice and then some, and he watched her, clearly mesmerized by her hand and the line she drew over his back and chest.

Soft, syllabant words fell out of her mouth. _“Close your eyes with holy dread, for he on honey-dew hath fed…”_

Malfoy stiffened at those words, her hypnotic spell broken as she stopped in front of him for the last time, a challenging smile adorning her lips. In retaliation, the shadows around the room took form, but they were no longer laughing figures. They hissed and cursed, a mob swirling around the room in outrage.

“Hermione found the poem for me. I don’t understand the connection, but clearly it means something to you. Why does it describe you so well, Malfoy?”

“Maybe it was written for me.” He showed his displeasure with a scowl, the self-satisfied smirk of minutes ago nowhere to be found. “Aren’t you clever witches?”

“How could a Muggle anticipate your interest in his work nearly two centuries after his death?”

He stared at her, debating whether or not to answer, she was sure. Had she caught him off guard again? The thought brought a smile to her face, and Malfoy’s eyes narrowed at the sight of her pleasure at his expense.

“He wasn’t a Muggle. He was an ungifted wizard in poor health, who spent the latter part of his life seeking inspiration for his work in all the wrong places.”

“The Dark Arts, naturally.”

“Naturally. He sought a cure for his illnesses. He sought an escape from his life. Most of all, he sought a muse, and he found one that led to an unanticipated demise. Coleridge’s philosophical writings and poems were enough inspiration for me to complete his quest. I currently bear the fruits of his labor.”

“How clever of you,” Ginny said as she shoved Draco down onto the chaise lounge.

She wanted to know his secrets, she really did, but her heart and her clit were rhythmically out of sync, driving Ginny to the point of distraction. Images of straddling Malfoy’s lap and grinding against his leg, his hand, his erection, his face—whatever would give her the best friction—kept intruding on her concentration. 

It took mere seconds to undo the buttons of the shirt she was wearing, and then the material was pooled at her feet. Malfoy’s eyes flashed at the sight of her naked skin, his hands rising as if to grab her before he clenched them into fists and lowered them to his thighs, his whole body straining toward her.

A hand on his shoulder encouraged him to lay back, his robes parting to the sides to reveal his bare chest. His eyes never left her face, not even to see what her hands were doing when she lowered them to his belt buckle. As Ginny pulled the belt free, she allowed her hands to brush against his erection, which caused him to hiss and his hips to jerk upwards. He continued to keep his hands to himself, though the muscles of his arms were wracked with tremors in the effort to stay still.

Ginny unbuttoned and unzipped his trousers, his cock springing free, glistening and purple in the dense light.

The shadow creatures became more subdued. Instead of a mob, they became an audience, tittering and moaning and grunting every time their master flinched. Ginny realized they embodied Malfoy’s own emotions, emotions he kept concealed from his facial expressions, and a thrill went through her at discovering a side of him he wanted to keep hidden.

She experimented by wrapping her hand around Malfoy’s cock, stroking it up and down to feel the velvety texture, spreading his pre-cum all along his shaft. Malfoy’s hips lifted in a thrust every time her hand reached the head of his cock, and he sucked in a breath when her thumb ran along the slit at the top. The shadows echoed Malfoy’s reluctant groans. They jumped along the walls with each thrust and spun around Malfoy and Ginny faster and faster, the circumference of each lap growing smaller as Ginny squeezed and stroked.

_Weave a circle ‘round him thrice…_

Another thrill shot through her at the realization that he was about to come into her hand, and she couldn’t have that. She removed her hand and stood from her kneeling position, to which the shadows began to complain and bounce in agitation. Malfoy, too, raised himself up onto his elbows, his flushed cheeks, glazed eyes, and sweet pants charming Ginny somehow and making her grow wetter.

A little more than a week ago, the reunion between Ginny, Hermione, and Malfoy had left both women shaken with desire and fear. The magnitude of the power that Malfoy displayed in the pleasure dome that encased Malfoy Manor and the depth of the darkness that reeked from his body had been overwhelming and terrifying. Ginny had fully believed that Malfoy could turn her inside out with a single thought—emotionally, mentally, and physically.

Now, he lay beneath her, weak with his own desire. Any malevolence Ginny had sensed from him in their previous encounters had nearly dissipated, replaced instead with tension and lust.

The great Draco Malfoy, who had sacrificed something of himself to Dark magic to become enormously, unthinkably powerful, lay in submission to _her_. The shadows inched closer and closer but didn’t touch them, and the heartbeat of the manor pounded through them in its erratic rhythm.

But Kubla Khan’s warning had been silenced. Beware? Beware? This man was Ginny’s to control.

She climbed onto the chaise lounge with him, her knees straddling his thighs, and Malfoy fell back with a groan, his hips already bucking in anticipation. As soon as Ginny grabbed his burning cock again, he stilled, until she poised herself over him, her sex dripping down her inner thighs and onto his legs as well. She placed him at her entrance, and he thrust up into her, both of them hissing at the hot, hot heat that filled her.

Rasping breaths, the occasional keening cry, the slap of flesh against flesh, the sounds joined the cacophony released by the shadows, composing a symphony of sex for the depraved.

Depraved. That’s how Ginny felt, and she loved it. For so long, years and years, she had tried to be the good girl. Morally righteous and correct, kind, a brash hero, the perfect companion to The-Boy-Who-Lived, always thoughtful and comforting when necessary.

What about her needs? This was what she wanted, this savage union in the dark, the power to force an even more powerful man into submission, choking him with his own lust for her, restraining him with the promise of her body.

Malfoy dug his heels into the chaise’s cushion, using the leverage to pick up the speed, his hands finally grasping Ginny’s waist but mostly for support. His gaze caught on her bouncing breasts as she rode him like a bucking broom. The darkness around them intensified as the shadows converged on each other, spinning faster—faster—faster—

His orgasm struck first, as sudden and violent as a car crash, but Ginny didn’t stop until she had followed him moments after, their mutual roars drowning out the euphoric wailings of the shadows, which had come to a sluggish stop as she and Malfoy came down from their high.

Feeling weak herself all of a sudden, Ginny let herself fall on top of Malfoy, who wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her as tightly as he could to his body, as if he needed her for warmth or comfort.

She pressed her mouth to his in a searing kiss, and then she let her lips graze his jaw, the column of his neck, his shoulder before allowing her head to rest there, her breathing and her heartbeat returning to a less frenzied rhythm gradually.

Ginny had never felt more powerful in her life.

o o o o

“Fuck me,” Malfoy said, his breath stirring the baby fine hairs at Ginny’s temple.

“I just did.”

He almost laughed. Mentally he did, only because he had no energy left to move the sound out of his chest, up his throat, and through his mouth. Another piece of his anatomy twitched, which seemed utterly impossible considering how devastating that orgasm had been.

The minx on top of him ground her pelvis against Draco’s in response, which caused him to twitch again, a moan falling out of his mouth without his permission.

On the one hand, Draco was well pleased with what had just occurred. He had never been so hard or got off with such intensity before in his life.

What did not please him was how easily his body succumbed to Weasley’s virtues. He did not enjoy being led around by his cock, easily manipulated by a tight, wet hole, his body responding without communicating with his brain first.

As Weasley picked herself up and dragged her lips over his once again, Draco was thoroughly aware that he had lost this battle. Weasley had seized control of him from the moment she’d removed his shirt from her body, and he had been perfectly content to submit.

He was determined not to let this change his plans.

Tongues scraped together, lips and teeth bumping and biting, and Draco sent out a cord of Dark magic to survey any damage caused by his weakness. He growled and nearly bit Weasley’s tongue in frustration as he felt the feeble stirrings of her darkness. The taint that had pledged its allegiance to Draco the previous night had reclaimed itself inside her.

Weasley dominating Draco had caused that taint to reattach to her soul, no longer obedient to Draco’s will, which meant he couldn’t finish the ritual to take her darkness and join it with his.

Which meant Weasley must continue to live until he had seduced the darkness once more.

A hiss of disapproval sounded around the room as the shadows grew larger, covering the span of each wall from floor to ceiling and drowning out every bit of light with a hazy film.

Weasley pulled her head back and searched Draco’s face. “What’s wrong?”

As he stared up into her eyes, a stab of rage pierced him, his idiocy becoming abruptly clear.

_Weave a circle round him thrice,_  
_And close your eyes with holy dread_  
_For he on honey-dew hath fed,_  
_And drunk the milk of Paradise._

He had thought the honey-dew and the milk of Paradise mentioned in the poem had been the waters of the fountain he had enchanted in the garden, enhanced with the protections of the love his parents had carried in their blood and strengthened by the bodies of those who had once served or been used by the Dark Lord after Draco had reclaimed the darkness inside them.

Now he realized his mistake. Ginny Weasley was the forbidden fruit, the milk of Paradise. He didn’t know how or why or what he had done to make her so, but she was, and as long as he continued to feed and drink from her body, he would never reclaim the essence the Dark Lord had left inside her.

Simple, then. If he stopped fucking her, he could continue his seduction and finish the ritual.

Even as he reached this conclusion, Weasley began to move against him, searching for purchase as she ground her clit against Draco’s pelvis. When that did not satisfy her, she undulated her hips, and Draco’s cock stirred inside her once more.

She was smiling at him in triumph, and the expression irritated the fuck out of him and instantly made him hard.

No, not simple. Not simple at all.

Without severing contact, Draco rolled them over so that Weasley was spread eagle on her back and he above her. He began to pound into her, hating the sound of her laughter mixed with her moans.

And delighting in it as well.

How fucking ironic that the last piece of the Dark Lord’s darkness that he needed to become all-powerful lingered inside the one woman he would not be able to successfully seduce. 

Because she was seducing him.

_“Fuck. Me.”_

“Gladly,” Weasley said with a wicked smile.

**End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this is the end of the story! Before you ask, no there will not be a continuation or a sequel! As I mentioned in the chapter notes, half, if not the majority, of this chapter has been rewritten. If you read this story during the fic exchange, you'll recognize most of the beginning, but the rest is brand new.
> 
> I also apologize for taking so long to update. I should know better than to promise chapters in a certain amount of time, but I never learn!
> 
> You can read "Kubla Khan" [here](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43991)! 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the story! Thank you so much for reading and let me know what you think! n_n

**Author's Note:**

>  **Rowan's Prompt (2)**  
>  **Basic premise:** Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair!  
>  **Must haves:**  
> 
> 
> * A D/G fic heavily inspired by the aesthetics of Coleridge's Kubla Khan, but the poem need not explicitly appear in the fic unless you want it to. This calls for a richly sensual, lush and heady prose.  
> 
> * The poem's closing lines contain the essence of Draco Malfoy's characterization in this fic: Weave a circle round him thrice and close your eyes with holy dread, for he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise. In short: he is a force to be reckoned with - whether or not he can be trusted is up to you.  
> 
> * Include some version of the line "She was reduced to a quivering mess" or "I was reduced to a quivering mess" as a result of a D/G interaction in whatever context you want.  
> 
> * Sexy sex; if you don't want to get explicit, it can be tastefully but unequivocally implied.
>   
>  **No-no's:** mousy!Ginny.  
>  **Rating range:** M  
>  **Bonus points:** A subtle shift of power. If Draco Malfoy gets more than he bargained for when he becomes involved with Ginny Weasley. If you convincingly convey the undercurrent of danger and forbidden sensuality that this prompt calls for, you'll have my profound gratitude and admiration.


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